May 28, 2025 • 49 mins
Let's talk about the money muscle and learning about financial literacy.
Julieta Duvall is an alternative education mom, an aviation professional, who has been living life differently for nearly 20 years. She shares real stories and practical insight on partnering with children and creating a life outside the conventional path.
Check out her podcast and social media to see the inspiration, guidance, and the fresh perspective she offers from her experiences on parenting, learning, and living.
She openly discusses her path through debt consolidation, twice, and the lessons she learned about financial literacy along the way as they learned to build their money muscle.
Find Julieta at The Unschooling Life
Follow Marci Talks Money (and Life) wherever you get your podcasts to get the episodes as they post.
Visit MoneyMarci.com to check out other financial literacy resources.
Julieta Duvall is an alternative education mom, an aviation professional, who has been living life differently for nearly 20 years. She shares real stories and practical insight on partnering with children and creating a life outside the conventional path.
Check out her podcast and social media to see the inspiration, guidance, and the fresh perspective she offers from her experiences on parenting, learning, and living.
She openly discusses her path through debt consolidation, twice, and the lessons she learned about financial literacy along the way as they learned to build their money muscle.
Find Julieta at The Unschooling Life
Follow Marci Talks Money (and Life) wherever you get your podcasts to get the episodes as they post.
Visit MoneyMarci.com to check out other financial literacy resources.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Powered by Riverside at them. Hello, this is Marcie talks
money and life and I am Money. Marci Welcome. I
appreciate this opportunity to meet interesting people who are able
and willing to share their stories about their financial journeys.
And my guest today is Julieta Dual. Julieta is an
(00:24):
alternative education mom and aviation professional who's been living life
differently for nearly twenty years. She shares real stories and
practical insights on partnering with children and creating life outside
the conventional path. And if you tune into her podcast
and social media, you'll find inspiration, guidance, and a fresh
perspective on parenting, learning, and living. Julietta and her husband
(00:47):
have been through debt consolidation twice because they didn't know
how to stay out of debt after the first round
and that was a big and expensive lesson, and most
of their lessons have come from their journey into home
education back in twenty twenty. Since then, they have worked
to peel the layers of conditioning on each aspect of
their lives. Jolieta now calls that building the money muscle
(01:09):
and choosing themselves as a priority. So welcome, JULIETA.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thank you so much, Marcy. I really appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
You have a very diverse life, yes, and an interesting story.
So I was so glad when you said you wanted
to come on and share your story and how asking
questions has changed your mindset and your relationship with money,
because I am all about breaking that taboo and talking
about money because that's how we.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Learn, yes, And just like you said, it really is
a taboo, and nobody likes talking about money, especially with children.
In my experience growing up was like that. We didn't
really talk about money, but we felt the strain that
had in my parents the aspect of credit card debt.
As I was listening to you reading a little bit
(01:56):
of my journey is that when I met my husband,
a big step in a relationship was to make sure
we both didn't have a lot of debt. Like we
were ready to combine our finances. We knew we wanted
to build a life together, but we both knew how
impactful money was to a relationship in a good and
(02:16):
in a bad way. We made it kind of like
a date and we gather our finances and make sure
that we were in a decent you know, in a
decent state, not a lot of debt. And that was that.
So it felt like we were on a good learning
experience together because we had seen our family struggle for money,
and yet we did it twice. Actually it was a
(02:38):
very expensive lesson.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Like you said, well, you know that money date. I
love that. That's something I recommend to my husband and
I do regularly where we make it a point at
least once a month, usually at breakfast, just because the
restaurants are quiet, and it gives us an opportunity to
go out and change our environment to just kind of
make sure we're all in line. This is this is
about our cams, This is about our spending. This is
(03:02):
about our projections of things we want to do, whether
it's a vacation or a project around the house or
whatever else. So it's important to integrate those money dates
regularly into your lives to keep that conversation going. And yet,
despite that and a conscientious start you had, you said,
you still fell into it twice.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, and really the first time was we so in
two thousand and eight we broke up as a couple
and we got back together. And so as we got
back together, we realized that we needed a place of
our own. My husband bought his house from his mom,
that his childhood home, and he didn't really feel like mine.
(03:43):
So I think at that point it was like me
thinking that I was sending a home that felt mine.
So we bought a home and we couldn't sell his house,
so we fell into real estate because we couldn't sell
the home. That was, you know, two thousand and eight.
It was like the financial crisis for closures at that point.
So we fell into this renting this house and we
(04:05):
had no experience doing that, so we did it, and
then we moved into this beautiful home in Oxford. It
was two and a half acres, so there were a
few pieces that we didn't really know. We had never
lived in a house with an LP gas tank. We
had never lived in a house with a well, and
when we first moved in there the winter months so LP.
(04:27):
Are you familiar with LP tank?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Not enough, I've never lived in a house with it.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So if you could an LP tank, you have a
company come out and this is mostly in remote areas,
you know, and they come out and they filled the
tank and it's a bill. So usually in the winter
months back in two thousand, so we moved in there
in two thousand and nine. So twenty ten, we were
(04:54):
filling the tank for six hundred dollars a month. It
was it was expected, it was the price of the tank.
But we also had windows. We had window casings, wood
casings that the seals were broken. There was no heat,
the house was not you know, the house was not
being heated. Heat was just going out through this windows.
(05:17):
So we had a six hundred dollars bill on our
monthly expense, and we had this windows that they quoted
us because we had so many. I think back then
it was like thirty five thousand dollars to replace. I'm like,
where is this money going to come from? So we
kind of went on not really seeing I feel we
were both afraid to look at the numbers. And we
(05:40):
got to a point where we would pay our bills
and then after that we would have thirty dollars left
for the next two weeks. We both got paid, sometimes
on the same date, and sometimes cycles felt that we
get paid every week, you know, he got paid and
I got paid. We had no children at this point.
It felt like we were just living. But also we
(06:01):
didn't really want to make change, and finally we were
forced really to make this change. So we entered debt
consolidation at that point, and it was a relief because
when you entered dead consolidation, what they do the company
negotiates your credit care rates. Because we were at credit
car rates for twenty two percent, twenty percent, and they
negotiated down to like two point five percent, three percent.
(06:24):
So we were doing one lump sum payment to this
debt consolidation company, and it felt like a relief. But
here is the thing too. Our goal at that point
was to get out of debt. We didn't look, which
is what we're doing now, how the money muscle is
being built what I call We didn't look at the
patterns of our spending. So we were both emotional spending.
(06:48):
And I find that some people we are conditioned to
pay our bills first thing and foremost, and we are
conditioned to pay other people first. So we pay our mortgage,
should we pay our car payment, we pay our cell phone,
our internet, we pay other people first. We had no
money to save for ourselves, and we had no money
(07:10):
to as you could say, when you buy something and
you say, well I deserve it, I work for it.
We had no money or no bank account, no savings
that could hold those purchases for later, so they were
emotional spending purchases, and they were completely on credit card
debt because we had paid everyone else and we forgot
(07:33):
about ourselves in the process.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
But what do you say to someone who says, you know, okay,
so I make We're gonna make it round numbers, even
though it's not realistic. I make one thousand dollars a month,
and if I pay myself first, then I can't pay
the mortgage, the cell phone, the car payment, the required bills.
So how do you pay yourself first and yet pay
on all these required things that you owe?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
So the way I see it is I dream big,
but I start small if I cannot save, because sometimes
I can't really even sometimes my husband and since we
began home education, we had to adjust the way we
work so we can be home with our children. And
that shift really pushed me into that direction where I
knew that if I can only save twenty dollars for myself,
(08:20):
then that is helpful at that moment. But what helps
build and growth that money. It's knowing where your money
goes and actually don't make it easy anymore to find
out where your money goes. So if you have an
Amazon account and you start buying stuff on Amazon, you
cannot go back to your bank account and track the
item that you had purchased because it only says Amazon.
(08:45):
You know, a whole bunch of numbers. It doesn't say
Amazon like for example, sheets or Amazon Slash two books
or something, so it's just all one lum sum and
actually chase. At some point, you used to be able
to to put the name of whatever store you know,
like home depot or something, and the charge is by
(09:06):
the store would come up, and you can't do that anymore.
So we live in this society that they don't make
it easy for you to track your money, but they
make it easy for us to spend it. It took
me a while because people would come into my bank
account and they would put me into overdrawn situations. At
some point, I remember, back in my days of early flying,
(09:29):
when I wasn't making a lot of money, I remember
a four dollars charge cost me thirty five dollars because
I didn't have enough money. But I didn't really know.
And that is like you say, when you have that
money date. We are afraid of looking sometimes because you
know there isn't enough there, but you have to look
like that is the biggest piece for me.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
So when you say people come into my bank account,
I'm pretty sure you don't mean random people are just
getting buy your bank account taking money out.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yes, it's just companies though, So for example, car insurans
will make will make it less expensive if you set
up your automatic wadrawn right the money they come in.
So it's okay for them to do that. And the
way I see it is like, for example, Spotify, I
love Spotify. I love my music without ads because when
(10:17):
I write, I have a playlist and I just write,
and this ad would come in the middle of it,
and I would just lose my mojo. So I am
totally okay with them coming into the bank account and
paying for the service. I'm paying for a service and
I really value that service. So I also know that
they come in at a certain time of the month.
So in my budget weekly date that I have, I
(10:41):
know that Spotify may come out next week, so my
bank account is set up for that payment. But when
I didn't look, when I didn't want to know, because
that really that's where it was at. I did not
want to know. I would get paid, I would pay
some bills, and then I would just spend, spend, spend,
and next day, you know, I had zero one and
(11:02):
I'm like, well, where did it all go? And it
was hard to navigate those changes because I wanted the
reward fast. Christmas, for example, the last quarter of the
year is the quarter for fundraising. That's when everyone does
their fundraising, and there's a big push for people to
be grateful, but also for people to spend, and it's
(11:25):
almost like a free for all, you know, it really is.
You know, it's almost like a free for all because
once you start into for example, Halloween, Halloween usually can
start the season of spending. So you have Halloween, you
have things given, you have Christmas, and the next thing
you know, January, people are starting to get the feeling
of the overspending. My husband and I we would have
(11:47):
the hardest times. January and February were the hardest financial
times for us because we would do those emotional spending
in October and November, and then our son was born
birthdays at the beginning of the year, and then with Christmas.
Oh no, I mean I am in deep troublesometimes, so
(12:07):
I have to carefully plan for that, otherwise it just
feels like too much.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Do you have multiple bank accounts? I often tell people
you need multiple bank accounts. This is the one for
holiday spending, this is the one for household emergencies. Having
those multiple bank accounts allows you to see how much
you have. It creates your budget better than a work
sheet does, ycause then it's very real.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Absolutely, I highly agree with that as well. The way
I do my money muscle in my I have four quadrants.
My upper left is for my family what I call
family first, and my upper right is for our shelter,
our home right, because if I cannot keep a home
a roof of our heads, then that's we're getting into
(12:51):
a different story. And then my lower left is about
food and gas, and my lower right are the variable.
So those are the things that you go in and
out of it. For example, for us as a family,
we use a trampoline park quite a bit during the winter,
so in the winter we sign up for their membership,
and I know that's my variable. That's something that's there,
(13:12):
but it's not it's not fixed, like it's not every month,
So I know I do it for six months and
then we cancel because we don't go enough. So there's
no reason for us to pay for something that we
don't use. And the food in gas quadrant has its
own bank account, and that includes my food when I
eat on the road, when I'm on at an airport,
(13:34):
which eating you know at airports is extremely expensive, or
eating in other cities when we go out to eat,
when we go to the movie theater. All of that
kind of comes out from that, and I usually have
a two week spending budget for that. Everything kind of
gets in there. And my upper right quadrant my shelter.
(13:55):
So your water bill comes usually quarterly, where in the
Sittum machine it's quarterly. So I do is I have
a fixed amount that I send every time I get paid,
because nobody likes to get a three hundred dollars water
bill every quarter, right, And those expenses are the ones
that will get your insurance bill. If you pay it
out of pocket, and you pay like every six months,
you're looking at a six hundred and seven hundred dollars bill.
(14:17):
Most of us are not really prepared to do that.
So I break it down into my little pieces, so
I give fifty dollars to DTE. I think I have
sixty dollars for the water, eighty dollars for gas for consumers.
Because gas is expensive. It has gone up gradually, and
I think this year we got maybe one or two
(14:38):
increases already, so it has gone up. So by doing
the small amounts every time I get paid, I don't
have When I get the statement, I generally have a credit,
and I as asked to make sure that we have.
We don't have too much of a credit because then
I'm giving them money that it could be used for
something else. So I go little by little, but I
(15:00):
have to look, and believe me, I did not want
to look. I mean, nobody likes to look. I was
paying for stuff that I wasn't using. I think we
got ABC mouths at some point when we first started
home educating and I was paying. I don't know. I
think at one point it was like nine ninety nine
and you would come from the iPad, so it would
come through Apple. And those memberships are the ones that
(15:22):
will they will sneak up on you. I would assess.
When I first started this process, the first step was
knowing where the money was going. I'm like, so we
do make a decent living. Where is this money going?
Because I sure feel like I'm not making anything, so
I was feeling frustrated, you know, So knowing where the
(15:43):
money goes kind of got us where we are today.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I think. I think that's really important. And a lot
of people get frustrated because they see, oh, I need
a year's worth of spending. Well, that's fine. I'm not
telling you to go back a year. I'm telling you
I don't know. Start at the beginning of the month.
Start at the beginning of the week, Start where you
are now and tracking that expenses, and you'll build that week,
that month, that year's worth of data over time. Yes,
(16:08):
and when you know where your money's going, you can
start queaking your plan. Don't wait until you have all
the data to make your plan, but certainly continue to
tweak the plan and make it better as you go along,
because you do want that money for the fun things,
and you do want the money for the long terms,
for the bigger expenses in your life that might happen.
It's so important to just keep on plugging away at it,
(16:32):
and it pays off. It pays off having that knowledge
and understanding where your money's going because then you can
make better decisions about what you want to do with it.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Well, it certainly pays off though, because your time. You're
trading your time, which is very valuable and very finite
because we all have just a finite amount of days
on this earth. So you're trading your time for that money.
And that's okay. If you know how your money's going
to be used or how you want to use it,
(17:01):
it doesn't matter. If you want to buy a parachutes
every week, you can still do that, but you are
making that conscious decision that that's how you want to
spend your money, and that's okay. I mean, you know,
we all have different likes. I have two hobbies I
have buying books and reading books. Buying books it's a
whole different thing. I love buying books, like I literally
(17:22):
will go to a book sore and just buy every book.
I don't always read them, but I love I get
such a satisfaction from buying them. So it doesn't matter
what it is. But if you start to work your
wishless within your budget, then it becomes something that's permanent,
so it's not something that you're going to be doing
(17:42):
once a year for every six months in big and
big amounts. And I think that's kind of what we
track down for us, was the big purchases that would
come about October November, and then some of them in
the middle of the year with summer, with spring, we
would start feeling like we needed something for the house
(18:04):
that needed to be done. We would do big purchases
like appliances or something big in the summer. So we
had a home deepo credit card for a very long time.
Don't do it, I don't recommend it. So we tracked
our purchases were emotional because we failed that we needed
to reward ourselves, and we did and we do, but
now it's more of a conscious aspect that we do.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
So, yeah, you said growing up, you know, both of
you came from families that had had credit card challenges
and whatever else. In spite of the challenges, we all
learned positive lessons too from somehow about how your parents did.
Whether it was because even though their situation meant they
had debt and credit card debt and that was challenging,
but you saw them openly communicating with each other or
(18:49):
trying to work through it even if they didn't make
progress or whatever. What were the positive lessons you saw
about money growing up.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
That's such a great question because most people always ask, like,
you know, you you remember the negative aspect of it.
I think one of the positive aspects that I saw
is about money is that money isn't everything. It's a
tool to help you do stuff. But my parents really
prioritize spending time with our friends. It's a family. My
(19:17):
dad would always say, it's just money, it's not a
big deal. And my mom obviously would be like, not
on the same page, because she was the one doing
most of the budget and stuff like that, and so
she was the one that had to sacrifice a lot
because my dad was actually the one that would spend money,
you know, through credit cards. But some of the family
times that we have as a family were spent on
(19:40):
credit cards. So I got that legacy almost a prioritize
in time with your family through credit cards was okay
because you were important, even though there was like no
preparation could happen. My mom is actually really good with money,
but I think they didn't work together the way they
could have, and they are still together and they still
(20:02):
find about it. And my dad just kind of walks
around and just you know, kind of waves. But my
mom was really good. I think if my mom had
been given the freedom to work with the money the
way she would have liked, they think their situation would
be a little bit different right now. But you know,
there's nothing like the presence. So they're still working through it.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Well that's okay, as long as they're still working through it.
I mean, so many times relationships have significant issues because
of money, especially when partners have different values, but they're
still communicating and working through it, and they both believe
family was a priority. So those are those were great
lessons to grow up with. And that's, you know, the
(20:42):
patterns of where we come from the roots of our
own things, even if we don't realize it. We learn
about money even from the things we're not aware of.
The subconscious. We saw the values of our parents regarding life,
regarding family, regarding money, regarding the choices they make. And
then when you're working your money muscle, you're pulling up
things from the roots to kind of examine them and
(21:06):
determine how how to get from where you are to
where you want to be. So it's all part of
one big tree or river or whatever analogy you might
want to use for it.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, it's all part of it. Though without their experiences,
I don't know that we would have gotten our own journey.
But the credit card definitely started to bring some questions
because that's not the way I wanted to live. It
really isn't the legacy I want to leave for the
boys either. Like for example, my father in law, his
(21:39):
wife passed away and he didn't know that she had
like five or six credit guards, so he got stuck
because he trusted her. But she got some credit cards,
some with his name and some without, so when she passed,
he got stuck with the ones that his name was
attached to, so there was really no communication there. And
some of the things that we do in our home now,
(22:01):
it's like openly talk about money. There's nothing wrong with
getting paid for something that you do. There's nothing wrong
with receiving the money, and often that relationship with it.
It's very troublesome with money. Like I think if money
was a person, it was just be like you're constantly
fighting with it. But you want to be friends with money,
(22:23):
and you want to know where your money goes and
make the money work for you, and the same thing
that your time, making it work for you so you
can live your best life possible. And obviously we all
have different circumstances. It's hard. I see in our next
door it's like people losing their jobs, people not being
able to have no food. I completely agree that there's
(22:46):
so much at there's so much at work right now
prevents us from really living our best life. But we
can only control what we do. And once you start
looking at your own situation, where your money comes from,
where your ghosts, and how you want to spend it,
then you begin to shape the life that you want.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
No, that makes sense. You talked about that before you
got married. The two of you sat down and talked
about your debt and your values. I've heard horror stories
of people who have gotten married and that's when they
find out that their spouse has significant credit cards, significant
student loans, and that's not a pleasant surprise to deal with.
(23:25):
And you both just overspent on a wedding and honeymoon
and whatever else because you weren't necessarily aware of the
overall picture.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yes, and that is so so important, because if you
don't work together, then you probably are not going to
go very far. And like you said, I think maybe still.
A few years ago, the statistic was that money was
the cause of divorce of most marriages, so I'm sure
it's still pretty high. My husband and I have been
together for almost twenty years, so we met in two
thousand and five, and the hardest times that we have
(23:55):
had as a couple have been during the low times
of our financial problems, right before getting into debt consolidation,
and during some of the rental So when we acquire
that first rental, we eventually then bought another one back
during that time two thousand and eight, we wanted to
fix it, so we did. My husband's very good he's
(24:18):
a very, very very talented person when he comes to construction,
building knowledgeable, so he did all the work. So some
of the credit card debt that we acquire were because
of the houses, in hopes that we would build a
portfolio of rental homes, and it was really hard to
go through that because he would go to work, then
(24:39):
he would go to the house, and then I was
away on a trip or something, so I wasn't really
contributing too much. He would almost get upset when I
would go to the house because I would start working
on something small. Obviously, and then I would sit down
and I'm like, Okay, I think I'm done here, and
that would leave. And he still talks about that, and
I'm like, there wasn't really a lot of community cation
(25:00):
back then, you know, Like I did my job as
a flight attendant and I had to be away. Back then,
I switched from one airline to another, so I took
a huge pay cut by moving to a different airline,
so I had to make up that money by flying more.
So I was flying back then like I don't know,
like one hundred and fifty hours, which is a lot.
(25:21):
So airline people usually work about eighty hours a month,
and then I was working like twice that. It's just
a lot of flying. So I was tired. And he
was like, well, you're just out flying around. I'm like,
that's tiring too.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
How it works. I've seen stewardesses. They work pretty hard.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah, it's a pretty hard job, not only the being
in the aircraft, but just being around people, being at
the airport, going from hotel to hotel. And that's you know,
twenty years, I finally started feeling the aches and like
rotelier clops, it's usually one of our biggest issues from
our backs and from the overheads and all that. So
some of our dead came from those moments, but some
(25:58):
of our issues also came from that because we weren't
communicating on what we were doing where we were going,
Like we were doing that, we were redoing the rental house,
but what was that for? Did we have a specific purpose?
And I think that's when by building my money muscle.
Now it's like I have short goals that kind of
moved me through the budgeting process. You know, I have
(26:22):
the goal of, for example, a certain amount in your
savings that makes me comfortable to have a certain amount
for my emergency fund because I've been on both ends.
I've had that amounts set aside, and I feel different
versus when I don't have it. Oh, I feel completely.
I just feel like living on the edge and like
(26:44):
I don't like living like this. So I just kind
of go through the small goals as to how I
want our life to be and how those building blocks
are set up. And you may not want a big
savings account, and that's okay. If you don't want it,
that's okay. But my car just down and they quoted
me thirty four thousand dollars for a new engine.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Thirty yes, thirty four hundred.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
No, No, thirty four thousand, yes.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Driving for thirty four thousand dollars engine.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
It's a twenty thirteen Hatchback BMW that I fell in
love with, but it was also an expensive lesson because
the mayenance every time it didn't break down often. I
didn't buy it new. It was new to me, but
the maintenance on the car was about three three thousand
(27:32):
and thirty five hundred every time he went in for something,
because of different reasons. So I knew that, and I
had a separate account for the maintenance. I knew that
I needed to save money for that, and I was
happy doing that. But obviously, right now, at this point,
thirty four thousand dollars is completely out of the question.
So now my next step is what are we going
to do? Do we need a second car? Is the
(27:54):
insurance or that all of those little questions before I
go into a dealership and get subbed in by a
really good salesperson into buying something new, I'm just not
really ready for that. So I'm just taking my time
with that because that's a big decision, and I highly
recommend for big decisions. Big purchases like a house, especially
(28:14):
a house, take your time, take your time and go
visit that house, like I don't know, more than more
than three times. When you purchase a house. You see
it for the first time, you fall in love, and
then you see it for a second time perhaps and
then a third time if your offer is accepted, and
then do a final walk through upon closing. That's almost
(28:36):
four times before for these incredible expensive purchase that you're
about to make, you see that real estate four times.
It should not be four times. You should be able
to sleep in that house for like two nights before
you buy it. Seriously, you know.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
We were a couple of years ago we looked at
maybe moving and there were a couple of places that
my husband and I liked, and then when we went
back to second time and we took our sons with us,
and it was like, yeah, no, this isn't this isn't
what we're looking for. So we didn't need to sleep
in it. But that second time, if you're not more
excited the next time when you go back, then it's
(29:10):
probably not the house. Fear. You should get more excited,
more connected, more whatever, and take your time on the
big house purchases. The problem is for a while here
houses were selling so fast. I had friends that were
looking to move, and numerous times they'd put bids. They
put in bids over the asking price. Then yes, stand
on their heads and whistle and whatever else, and they
(29:33):
were losing houses again and again because the housing market
was so crazy hot. But even so, unless you need to,
you know what, if the housing market is hot, that's
a great time to not be there, because that's when
the houses are more expensive than what they reasonably should be.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yes, it is so true. And people were doing the
no appraise will guarantee, which you know, if the house
apprais for a lower value, they were still going to
buy that by bringing more money to the table. And
to me, it just didn't like I like you said,
some people really needed to purchase another house, But if
you don't really need to, then maybe that it really
(30:12):
isn't the property for you. You don't want to give
more money than something is worth, or get into a
new house and be underwater already according to the numbers
of what the bank thinks the house is worth. So
it was really really crazy for houses. We moved five
years ago, so that was the other the second time
we got into that consolidation. It's always been real estate related,
(30:35):
mostly because of big expenses that stuff that needed to
be done. We moved five years ago into this house.
We live in an old home. It's a tutor home.
It's almost one hundred years old. It's beautiful and everyone says, well,
it has so much character. Let me tell you character
is expensive. Yes, it is very expensive. And while the
(30:55):
house has really good bones, it really came to us
with neglect because they didn't really take care of it.
A lot of neglect. And houses speak to you. I
know they have energy. You probably think I'm crazy, but
I am telling you. Houses have energy. And the energy
of this house was that he needed a lot of work.
(31:15):
It was suffering. And my husband, I call him the
house whisper because my husband goes into houses and he's like, yeah,
the house is not happy, and he just really really
takes the needs of the house as far as like structures,
you know, walls, all of it. So we had to
do a lot of extensive renovations into this house. They're
(31:36):
all behind the walls, Like the expensive stuff in your
home will be behind your walls and underneath in your mechanics,
your furnace, your water heater, all of that. You want
all of those little pieces to work just beautiful so
you can enjoy a peaceful environment.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
And you want them safely. I mean, one hundred years ago,
the wiring requirements, the electric things you would have had
no house would have been so much less. So, yeah,
you're going behind the walls to bring these things not
just up to code for some bureaucrat to rubber stamp,
but up to safety.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Because to safety, yes, yes, and bad electric hast cast
fires in the past, so yes, you want to make
sure that all of that is safe. But yes, most
of our debt that now that unless I'm thinking about it,
has been real estate related. There was probably a few
splurties on stuff vacations or whatnot, but it really wasn't
(32:30):
like that. It wasn't until I realized not only that
I wanted to get out of debt, but also how
to stay out of debt that I really learned my
lesson the second that was the second debt consolidation. That's
the lesson it gave me. So my goal wasn't just
to get out of debt. That was the goal in
the first time around. The second time around was to
get out of debt, but how to stay out of debt?
(32:52):
And I feel like that's not something that people really
think about because even your credit score doesn't let you
get out it fully, because if you're fully debt free,
your credit score will suffer and you won't be able
to buy something. So there's a balance there in your
credit score that you have to have some debt. And
(33:12):
I'm like, why do I need to have some debt?
So I started asking the questions, and I just want
to be able to make my own decisions. So that's
kind of where I'm at. So I want to be
out of debt, and I want to stay out of debt,
and to me, by staying out of debt, it's by
paying ourselves and our family first, making sure that our
structure is nurture, whether it's with maybe an outing or something,
(33:37):
but always doing something to nurture our souls before I
give my money that I work very hard for to
other people that I don't even know, because I don't
know my mortgage company. I just get a statement and
they say, well give me some money, and I'm like, well, okay,
but it's just my own version of my best life.
That's my version of it. I want to know where
(33:59):
the money goes, and I want to be able to
give it to services and people that I know, Like
I love going to our small businesses and knowing where
my money ends up and buying stuff from people that
may have used it once and now I can give
it a second use. I know where my money ends up.
I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, but I
(34:19):
stop our Amazon membership maybe last year, I think, so
I haven't had an Amazon membership, So whenever I buy something,
I'm very much more conscious or who I give the
money to, because, like I said, I worked very hard
for it.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Now you've talked about debt consolidation and that you've gone
through it twice. I've heard from a number of people
that they've had bad experiences with debt consolidation. It sounds
like yours was positive both times. Yes, So how were
you able to find companies that were legitimate that took
real care of you that you didn't walk away from
(34:55):
it feeling that you had just been scammed?
Speaker 2 (34:58):
You know, that's a great question. I liked to say
that I like to take credit for it, but I cannot.
It was my husband who did the due diligence to find.
We went to the company. It's called green Path, and
their structure is just like I said earlier. They negotiate
the company the rates with the credit card companies, and
(35:18):
I think we get charged fifty dollars months or that's
their fee, So there is a fee to it, but
it's all you know, rolled up into your monthly payment.
And they do the snowball effect or the snowball tactic,
which is every credit card you have five, your monthly
payment will get you know, divide into five payments and
(35:39):
once the lower the lowest balance credit card gets paid off,
that amount that they used to receive now gets moved
over to the one with the lowest balance at that
out of the four. Now he did all the works.
That is the company that we went through at the
two time, so we have been through that consolidation. We
(36:00):
use the same company and I recommended that company to
other people that feel that that's an option. I also
think that's a personal decision to go through it, because
your credit gets frozen if you try to get another
credit card. If you get another credit card, then the
deal you have with the credit cards and with green
Path will be it'll canceled out because you're seeking credit elsewhere. Also,
(36:25):
I believe it doesn't prevent you from buying a house,
but it shows up and it may prevent you from
purchasing a car. So the second time, we made sure
that we had everything that we needed before we went
into this frozen, you know, dormant state for credit. But
I'm hoping to kind of just keep it that way
(36:46):
because that's not how I want to spend my life. Nowadays,
I will spend less so I don't have to work more.
So I'm very conscious about that, and I wasn't like
that before. I just always just spend, spend, spend until
my heart was full. But I don't do that.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
I tell people, do you really want to be paying
for today's meal three months from now? Because if you're
buying it on credit card and you're not paying the
full balance, then that just becomes part of that big
ball you're throwing money at in the hopes it'll eventually
work its way down. The reason that you have to
have credit to get credit to get these loans, whether
(37:22):
for a house or car, whatever, is because they have
to see a history so that they know that you
will make those payments. But on the flip side, you
don't want your history to become the overwhelming mess that
is where all your money is going. Yes, if you
own a house and you're paying a mortgage, and if
you have a car and you're making a payment, then
you're already building that credit. You don't need five more
(37:45):
credit cards. If you're young and you are just starting
to work, maybe you're living in your folks house, still,
then get a credit card, use it periodically, pay it
off monthly, so that you're starting to build that history,
so that when you want to look at getting a
car or a house or whatever else, they may not
see a huge history, but they'll see a history. They'll
see the intention and the organization and that you're making
(38:08):
these payments. It's too easy. I mean when I went
to college, you know, you barely started. The next thing
you do, you had ten credit card applications at your mail.
And I knew people that by the end of the
first semester were already in debt that they would carry
with them for ten years after graduating, and they were
still getting more credit card applications, because that's just the
(38:31):
way things were done at that point in time.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yes, and they come hard at you. So I think
that's why it's also important to share those topics when
you're growing up, because a lot of us, I mean,
I knew my parents had trouble, but I didn't really
understand the whole aspect of it. So I just knew
that a credit card could get you something and then
I had to pay you back and if I didn't,
(38:54):
I would probably have bad credit. But it wasn't really
fully thinking it through person. So when you're just given
the freedom to spend money, or it feels like the
freedom to spend that, it just kind of gets out
of control because you've never had that freedom before. You've
never had that ability to do something like that. In
combination with the student loans and credit card dead it's
(39:17):
just a combination for disaster when you're just kind of
get wrapped up into that because we're afraid to talk
about it and to share the learning, like feels like
we're going to be seen as like, oh, you just
don't know anything. But I'm like, if anything I can
share from this experience is for you to take whatever resonates.
Obviously everyone's experience with money is different, but if we
(39:37):
could just talk about it, a little bit more and
just help them decide how they want to live their life.
Then maybe they'll be like, well, maybe that a credit
card isn't for me, or you know, just doing things differently.
That's all.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Before we want to wrap up, I do want to
talk to you a little bit. You are a homeschooler
now in Michigan they have started recently putting financial literacy
into schools. As a homeschooling mom, you get to choose
your curriculum. I don't know how old your kids are
or at what point in time you ended up homeschooling.
How did you evolve to homeschooling or was that always
(40:10):
the plan?
Speaker 2 (40:11):
So it wasn't always a plan. We were pandemic homeschoolers,
and twenty twenty kind of pushed me into something that
I knew nothing about. I was actually afraid, and honestly,
if he hadn't been for the pandemic, I don't know
that I would be here. I like to say that
I probably would have taken the leap of leaving the system,
but it might have been I was too comfortable working
within the system, you know, doing the school drop off,
(40:33):
the pickup, the mom thing, the extracurriculars, like I was
the definition of a tiger mom. So when we left
the school system because of twenty twenty, we kind of
evolved because I realized how disconnected I was for my
oldest son. My boys are eleven and six. Now. Back
then twenty twenty, my oldest son was six, so I
(40:54):
was living with him, I was living under the same roof.
But when we started homeschool, then we were spending time together.
Felt how disconnected we were. We didn't really know each other,
and I didn't really think that was right. So we
started reconnecting. You know. I went into curriculum frenzy. At first,
that was another expensive lesson. I spent almost ten thousand
(41:15):
dollars buying curriculum. And again it was in big purchases.
It was small purchases because oh this looks good, this
looks good, twenty dollars, thirty dollars Amazon twenty five, thirty five,
forty five, nineteen, and next thing, you know, boxes were
just coming to my house and I'm like, okay. So
it was really hard at the beginning, and then the
state of mission was like yes, mask, no mask, yes this,
(41:39):
no this. There was a hole back and forth the
twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. So I said,
let's just do it for a year and we'll reassess.
And that second year came around, let's reassess or still
don't really know what's going to happen, so let's just
stay out another year, and next thing, you know, we
just never went back. We do check ins. I do
(42:00):
quarterly checkings with the boys as far as our activities
because they're constantly changing. Similar to the money, well, the
money will always be moving, so your budget will always
have some variables moving. That's why it's important to look
into it because it will always be moving. So our
interests are always moving, and we do checkings. We have
(42:21):
some groups that we meet up that we prioritize to
meet up with, and then we build everything else around it.
And I love that they have added those classes into
the school system because it's really important. We homeschool because
I love spending time with my kids and because right
now that's what works for all of us as a family.
If they wanted to go back to school, I would
(42:43):
be like, Okay, let's make sure that we set you
up for success to go into the system that requires X,
Y or z this is what they require of use.
Let's set you up for success. And I think by
having literacy classes, financial literacy, that's setting up people success.
That's what we want for people. We want everyone to succeed,
(43:03):
everyone to find their best live their best life. However
they want to do that. They work for the money,
that work really hard, spend it however you want, but
feeling free in the process of earning it and then
spending it. It's all good. Just you know, whatever works
for you. But we have to be open about it.
So I hope they keep those classes, and I hope
(43:25):
they help people and their families because it was something
that we really needed and I didn't realize that until
we started home educating.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
I have had friends throughout the years who have homeschooled
for various reasons m h and in different ways. Yes,
and I think it's fascinating. It wasn't for us. I
did consider it at some point in time, okay, and
kind of looked into what it would mean, you know,
because obviously, while while it's great in the moment, you've
(43:53):
also got to be ready at the point in time
when they theoretically graduate from high school and are ready
to move on have they really had the full breadth
of education that they need or the depth on the
various subjects of their interest. And I know there are
wonderful homeschooling communities out there that you're not expected to
be an expert on every subject. And a lot of
the community colleges work really well with homeschoolers. Yes, so
(44:17):
there's a lot of great opportunities out there. So I
think it's a fascinating world. And I know that's one
of your podcasts, and I think your website are on homeschooling.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Yeah, so I am very alternative. I'm what's considered a nonschooler,
so I follow very self directed education practices. And it is,
like you said, it is definitely different for everyone. Everyone's
way of homeschooling is different because our interests are very different.
So the way we live our life is very different
as well. And I really think their in aviation, you know,
(44:47):
nine to eleven, it's a definite marker of the industry
what you could do pre nine to eleven and what
you could do post nine to eleven as far as
like airport security, all of that. I feel that homeschool
only has twenty twenty. It's a definite marker in the
homeschooling world. Prior to twenty twenty, it was very curriculum based,
(45:11):
very structure, which is like doing school at home. And
post twenty twenty there was a lot of different ways,
a lot of groups formed, a lot of meetups, micro schools,
co ops, so it really revolutionized what families were looking
for out of home educating. And I think that's where
I was kind of grateful that I started back then.
(45:34):
I don't know that I would be here if I
had been thinking about homeschooling back in twenty fourteen, when
my oldest son was born, even back then. You know,
my younger son was born in twenty nineteen, and I
started thinking about it because I wanted to travel and
you know, do all these things which we do, but
it felt unattainable for some reason. There wasn't a lot
(45:55):
of diversity in the homeschooling world either too. You know,
we're biracial family, so that was important to us, and
it was hard to find our core group of people,
but we eventually did. And now that's kind of what
I do. I love sharing the stories because sometimes I
feel like people see home educating in us like a
dark forest and you're at the edge of the forest
(46:17):
and you're like, hmm, it looks all known, and it is.
But I can tell you that once you dive through,
walk through the darker paths, which is our conditioning, what
we think education should look like, how we do education
at home, what they should know home educating is very
non linear learning. You still learn everything is just not
(46:39):
the way it shows up in the school system. So
once you get through those darker fears. And I had
a lot of fears. Oh my early journals are full
of I don't know if I can do this. I
was afraid. They have a lot of tears. Those pages
have a lot of salty tears because I was a
hot mess. Honestly, I tell people I can do it.
(47:01):
If I can work through those conditioning aspects that I had,
I'm telling you anybody can do it. It's just takes
a little bit of work. And same with the money
is just it takes a little bit of work and dedication,
and it doesn't happen all that once. I've been at
this since twenty twenty and I still have moments. It
doesn't stop me from having the moments, they're just not
(47:22):
as often. So It's been a beautiful journey. I wouldn't
change for the world, but I know twenty twenty really
changed a lot for a lot of families, and it
made it possible for us to do that. I invite
everyone to explore if it is for you, it works
if it doesn't. Some people do thrive in the educational system.
I did. I was a perfect student, I really was.
(47:44):
I have to say that, but I've always loved school.
I love instruction. I love learning from a person, so
I love the instruction setup. I didn't really love writing
papers or getting grades, but I was always a good student,
so I love the structure, the schedules, the classrooms, all
of that. It was good to me, but it's not
probably what my children would enjoy at this point. It
(48:06):
doesn't mean that it's not for them later. Both of
them are thinking about careers that require a college degree,
so we are working towards getting what they need in
order for them to feel successful, even though it's still
kind of early. But they're both talk about it, so
we talk about the preparation that that needs.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
That's awesome. I have really enjoyed talking to you. I
think we've covered I don't even know how many yes.
Subject ariis I've enjoyed every moment of it. I'm going
to share your website and your podcast links when I
post this. I just wanted to thank you for coming here.
Do you have any final advice or thoughts you want
to share?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Thank you so much more, Siny for having me and
for really opening the space to speak about this particular topic.
I feel like I think about it often and it's
been a huge part of a transformation. But if you're
thinking about it about money, it's just really just dream big,
but start small. Find out where your money goes. First,
(49:04):
look at your bank accounts. It's okay to look into it,
you know, make it a nice date with yourself, with
your partner, and look at the money. Look at the money,
because your time is so valuable and so precious that
you should use it however you want to. So make
your money work for you and don't just work for
your money. That's it.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Thank you. So this has been Marcie talks Money in Life.
I am money Marcie, and thanks for listening. And you
got this
Powered by Riverside at them. Hello, this is Marcie talks
money and life and I am Money. Marci Welcome. I
appreciate this opportunity to meet interesting people who are able
and willing to share their stories about their financial journeys.
And my guest today is Julieta Dual. Julieta is an
(00:24):
alternative education mom and aviation professional who's been living life
differently for nearly twenty years. She shares real stories and
practical insights on partnering with children and creating life outside
the conventional path. And if you tune into her podcast
and social media, you'll find inspiration, guidance, and a fresh
perspective on parenting, learning, and living. Julietta and her husband
(00:47):
have been through debt consolidation twice because they didn't know
how to stay out of debt after the first round
and that was a big and expensive lesson, and most
of their lessons have come from their journey into home
education back in twenty twenty. Since then, they have worked
to peel the layers of conditioning on each aspect of
their lives. Jolieta now calls that building the money muscle
(01:09):
and choosing themselves as a priority. So welcome, JULIETA.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thank you so much, Marcy. I really appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
You have a very diverse life, yes, and an interesting story.
So I was so glad when you said you wanted
to come on and share your story and how asking
questions has changed your mindset and your relationship with money,
because I am all about breaking that taboo and talking
about money because that's how we.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Learn, yes, And just like you said, it really is
a taboo, and nobody likes talking about money, especially with children.
In my experience growing up was like that. We didn't
really talk about money, but we felt the strain that
had in my parents the aspect of credit card debt.
As I was listening to you reading a little bit
(01:56):
of my journey is that when I met my husband,
a big step in a relationship was to make sure
we both didn't have a lot of debt. Like we
were ready to combine our finances. We knew we wanted
to build a life together, but we both knew how
impactful money was to a relationship in a good and
(02:16):
in a bad way. We made it kind of like
a date and we gather our finances and make sure
that we were in a decent you know, in a
decent state, not a lot of debt. And that was that.
So it felt like we were on a good learning
experience together because we had seen our family struggle for money,
and yet we did it twice. Actually it was a
(02:38):
very expensive lesson.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Like you said, well, you know that money date. I
love that. That's something I recommend to my husband and
I do regularly where we make it a point at
least once a month, usually at breakfast, just because the
restaurants are quiet, and it gives us an opportunity to
go out and change our environment to just kind of
make sure we're all in line. This is this is
about our cams, This is about our spending. This is
(03:02):
about our projections of things we want to do, whether
it's a vacation or a project around the house or
whatever else. So it's important to integrate those money dates
regularly into your lives to keep that conversation going. And yet,
despite that and a conscientious start you had, you said,
you still fell into it twice.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, and really the first time was we so in
two thousand and eight we broke up as a couple
and we got back together. And so as we got
back together, we realized that we needed a place of
our own. My husband bought his house from his mom,
that his childhood home, and he didn't really feel like mine.
(03:43):
So I think at that point it was like me
thinking that I was sending a home that felt mine.
So we bought a home and we couldn't sell his house,
so we fell into real estate because we couldn't sell
the home. That was, you know, two thousand and eight.
It was like the financial crisis for closures at that point.
So we fell into this renting this house and we
(04:05):
had no experience doing that, so we did it, and
then we moved into this beautiful home in Oxford. It
was two and a half acres, so there were a
few pieces that we didn't really know. We had never
lived in a house with an LP gas tank. We
had never lived in a house with a well, and
when we first moved in there the winter months so LP.
(04:27):
Are you familiar with LP tank?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Not enough, I've never lived in a house with it.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So if you could an LP tank, you have a
company come out and this is mostly in remote areas,
you know, and they come out and they filled the
tank and it's a bill. So usually in the winter
months back in two thousand, so we moved in there
in two thousand and nine. So twenty ten, we were
(04:54):
filling the tank for six hundred dollars a month. It
was it was expected, it was the price of the tank.
But we also had windows. We had window casings, wood
casings that the seals were broken. There was no heat,
the house was not you know, the house was not
being heated. Heat was just going out through this windows.
(05:17):
So we had a six hundred dollars bill on our
monthly expense, and we had this windows that they quoted
us because we had so many. I think back then
it was like thirty five thousand dollars to replace. I'm like,
where is this money going to come from? So we
kind of went on not really seeing I feel we
were both afraid to look at the numbers. And we
(05:40):
got to a point where we would pay our bills
and then after that we would have thirty dollars left
for the next two weeks. We both got paid, sometimes
on the same date, and sometimes cycles felt that we
get paid every week, you know, he got paid and
I got paid. We had no children at this point.
It felt like we were just living. But also we
(06:01):
didn't really want to make change, and finally we were
forced really to make this change. So we entered debt
consolidation at that point, and it was a relief because
when you entered dead consolidation, what they do the company
negotiates your credit care rates. Because we were at credit
car rates for twenty two percent, twenty percent, and they
negotiated down to like two point five percent, three percent.
(06:24):
So we were doing one lump sum payment to this
debt consolidation company, and it felt like a relief. But
here is the thing too. Our goal at that point
was to get out of debt. We didn't look, which
is what we're doing now, how the money muscle is
being built what I call We didn't look at the
patterns of our spending. So we were both emotional spending.
(06:48):
And I find that some people we are conditioned to
pay our bills first thing and foremost, and we are
conditioned to pay other people first. So we pay our mortgage,
should we pay our car payment, we pay our cell phone,
our internet, we pay other people first. We had no
money to save for ourselves, and we had no money
(07:10):
to as you could say, when you buy something and
you say, well I deserve it, I work for it.
We had no money or no bank account, no savings
that could hold those purchases for later, so they were
emotional spending purchases, and they were completely on credit card
debt because we had paid everyone else and we forgot
(07:33):
about ourselves in the process.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
But what do you say to someone who says, you know, okay,
so I make We're gonna make it round numbers, even
though it's not realistic. I make one thousand dollars a month,
and if I pay myself first, then I can't pay
the mortgage, the cell phone, the car payment, the required bills.
So how do you pay yourself first and yet pay
on all these required things that you owe?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
So the way I see it is I dream big,
but I start small if I cannot save, because sometimes
I can't really even sometimes my husband and since we
began home education, we had to adjust the way we
work so we can be home with our children. And
that shift really pushed me into that direction where I
knew that if I can only save twenty dollars for myself,
(08:20):
then that is helpful at that moment. But what helps
build and growth that money. It's knowing where your money
goes and actually don't make it easy anymore to find
out where your money goes. So if you have an
Amazon account and you start buying stuff on Amazon, you
cannot go back to your bank account and track the
item that you had purchased because it only says Amazon.
(08:45):
You know, a whole bunch of numbers. It doesn't say
Amazon like for example, sheets or Amazon Slash two books
or something, so it's just all one lum sum and
actually chase. At some point, you used to be able
to to put the name of whatever store you know,
like home depot or something, and the charge is by
(09:06):
the store would come up, and you can't do that anymore.
So we live in this society that they don't make
it easy for you to track your money, but they
make it easy for us to spend it. It took
me a while because people would come into my bank
account and they would put me into overdrawn situations. At
some point, I remember, back in my days of early flying,
(09:29):
when I wasn't making a lot of money, I remember
a four dollars charge cost me thirty five dollars because
I didn't have enough money. But I didn't really know.
And that is like you say, when you have that
money date. We are afraid of looking sometimes because you
know there isn't enough there, but you have to look
like that is the biggest piece for me.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
So when you say people come into my bank account,
I'm pretty sure you don't mean random people are just
getting buy your bank account taking money out.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yes, it's just companies though, So for example, car insurans
will make will make it less expensive if you set
up your automatic wadrawn right the money they come in.
So it's okay for them to do that. And the
way I see it is like, for example, Spotify, I
love Spotify. I love my music without ads because when
(10:17):
I write, I have a playlist and I just write,
and this ad would come in the middle of it,
and I would just lose my mojo. So I am
totally okay with them coming into the bank account and
paying for the service. I'm paying for a service and
I really value that service. So I also know that
they come in at a certain time of the month.
So in my budget weekly date that I have, I
(10:41):
know that Spotify may come out next week, so my
bank account is set up for that payment. But when
I didn't look, when I didn't want to know, because
that really that's where it was at. I did not
want to know. I would get paid, I would pay
some bills, and then I would just spend, spend, spend,
and next day, you know, I had zero one and
(11:02):
I'm like, well, where did it all go? And it
was hard to navigate those changes because I wanted the
reward fast. Christmas, for example, the last quarter of the
year is the quarter for fundraising. That's when everyone does
their fundraising, and there's a big push for people to
be grateful, but also for people to spend, and it's
(11:25):
almost like a free for all, you know, it really is.
You know, it's almost like a free for all because
once you start into for example, Halloween, Halloween usually can
start the season of spending. So you have Halloween, you
have things given, you have Christmas, and the next thing
you know, January, people are starting to get the feeling
of the overspending. My husband and I we would have
(11:47):
the hardest times. January and February were the hardest financial
times for us because we would do those emotional spending
in October and November, and then our son was born
birthdays at the beginning of the year, and then with Christmas.
Oh no, I mean I am in deep troublesometimes, so
(12:07):
I have to carefully plan for that, otherwise it just
feels like too much.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Do you have multiple bank accounts? I often tell people
you need multiple bank accounts. This is the one for
holiday spending, this is the one for household emergencies. Having
those multiple bank accounts allows you to see how much
you have. It creates your budget better than a work
sheet does, ycause then it's very real.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Absolutely, I highly agree with that as well. The way
I do my money muscle in my I have four quadrants.
My upper left is for my family what I call
family first, and my upper right is for our shelter,
our home right, because if I cannot keep a home
a roof of our heads, then that's we're getting into
(12:51):
a different story. And then my lower left is about
food and gas, and my lower right are the variable.
So those are the things that you go in and
out of it. For example, for us as a family,
we use a trampoline park quite a bit during the winter,
so in the winter we sign up for their membership,
and I know that's my variable. That's something that's there,
(13:12):
but it's not it's not fixed, like it's not every month,
So I know I do it for six months and
then we cancel because we don't go enough. So there's
no reason for us to pay for something that we
don't use. And the food in gas quadrant has its
own bank account, and that includes my food when I
eat on the road, when I'm on at an airport,
(13:34):
which eating you know at airports is extremely expensive, or
eating in other cities when we go out to eat,
when we go to the movie theater. All of that
kind of comes out from that, and I usually have
a two week spending budget for that. Everything kind of
gets in there. And my upper right quadrant my shelter.
(13:55):
So your water bill comes usually quarterly, where in the
Sittum machine it's quarterly. So I do is I have
a fixed amount that I send every time I get paid,
because nobody likes to get a three hundred dollars water
bill every quarter, right, And those expenses are the ones
that will get your insurance bill. If you pay it
out of pocket, and you pay like every six months,
you're looking at a six hundred and seven hundred dollars bill.
(14:17):
Most of us are not really prepared to do that.
So I break it down into my little pieces, so
I give fifty dollars to DTE. I think I have
sixty dollars for the water, eighty dollars for gas for consumers.
Because gas is expensive. It has gone up gradually, and
I think this year we got maybe one or two
(14:38):
increases already, so it has gone up. So by doing
the small amounts every time I get paid, I don't
have When I get the statement, I generally have a credit,
and I as asked to make sure that we have.
We don't have too much of a credit because then
I'm giving them money that it could be used for
something else. So I go little by little, but I
(15:00):
have to look, and believe me, I did not want
to look. I mean, nobody likes to look. I was
paying for stuff that I wasn't using. I think we
got ABC mouths at some point when we first started
home educating and I was paying. I don't know. I
think at one point it was like nine ninety nine
and you would come from the iPad, so it would
come through Apple. And those memberships are the ones that
(15:22):
will they will sneak up on you. I would assess.
When I first started this process, the first step was
knowing where the money was going. I'm like, so we
do make a decent living. Where is this money going?
Because I sure feel like I'm not making anything, so
I was feeling frustrated, you know, So knowing where the
(15:43):
money goes kind of got us where we are today.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I think. I think that's really important. And a lot
of people get frustrated because they see, oh, I need
a year's worth of spending. Well, that's fine. I'm not
telling you to go back a year. I'm telling you
I don't know. Start at the beginning of the month.
Start at the beginning of the week, Start where you
are now and tracking that expenses, and you'll build that week,
that month, that year's worth of data over time. Yes,
(16:08):
and when you know where your money's going, you can
start queaking your plan. Don't wait until you have all
the data to make your plan, but certainly continue to
tweak the plan and make it better as you go along,
because you do want that money for the fun things,
and you do want the money for the long terms,
for the bigger expenses in your life that might happen.
It's so important to just keep on plugging away at it,
(16:32):
and it pays off. It pays off having that knowledge
and understanding where your money's going because then you can
make better decisions about what you want to do with it.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Well, it certainly pays off though, because your time. You're
trading your time, which is very valuable and very finite
because we all have just a finite amount of days
on this earth. So you're trading your time for that money.
And that's okay. If you know how your money's going
to be used or how you want to use it,
(17:01):
it doesn't matter. If you want to buy a parachutes
every week, you can still do that, but you are
making that conscious decision that that's how you want to
spend your money, and that's okay. I mean, you know,
we all have different likes. I have two hobbies I
have buying books and reading books. Buying books it's a
whole different thing. I love buying books, like I literally
(17:22):
will go to a book sore and just buy every book.
I don't always read them, but I love I get
such a satisfaction from buying them. So it doesn't matter
what it is. But if you start to work your
wishless within your budget, then it becomes something that's permanent,
so it's not something that you're going to be doing
(17:42):
once a year for every six months in big and
big amounts. And I think that's kind of what we
track down for us, was the big purchases that would
come about October November, and then some of them in
the middle of the year with summer, with spring, we
would start feeling like we needed something for the house
(18:04):
that needed to be done. We would do big purchases
like appliances or something big in the summer. So we
had a home deepo credit card for a very long time.
Don't do it, I don't recommend it. So we tracked
our purchases were emotional because we failed that we needed
to reward ourselves, and we did and we do, but
now it's more of a conscious aspect that we do.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
So, yeah, you said growing up, you know, both of
you came from families that had had credit card challenges
and whatever else. In spite of the challenges, we all
learned positive lessons too from somehow about how your parents did.
Whether it was because even though their situation meant they
had debt and credit card debt and that was challenging,
but you saw them openly communicating with each other or
(18:49):
trying to work through it even if they didn't make
progress or whatever. What were the positive lessons you saw
about money growing up.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
That's such a great question because most people always ask, like,
you know, you you remember the negative aspect of it.
I think one of the positive aspects that I saw
is about money is that money isn't everything. It's a
tool to help you do stuff. But my parents really
prioritize spending time with our friends. It's a family. My
(19:17):
dad would always say, it's just money, it's not a
big deal. And my mom obviously would be like, not
on the same page, because she was the one doing
most of the budget and stuff like that, and so
she was the one that had to sacrifice a lot
because my dad was actually the one that would spend money,
you know, through credit cards. But some of the family
times that we have as a family were spent on
(19:40):
credit cards. So I got that legacy almost a prioritize
in time with your family through credit cards was okay
because you were important, even though there was like no
preparation could happen. My mom is actually really good with money,
but I think they didn't work together the way they
could have, and they are still together and they still
(20:02):
find about it. And my dad just kind of walks
around and just you know, kind of waves. But my
mom was really good. I think if my mom had
been given the freedom to work with the money the
way she would have liked, they think their situation would
be a little bit different right now. But you know,
there's nothing like the presence. So they're still working through it.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Well that's okay, as long as they're still working through it.
I mean, so many times relationships have significant issues because
of money, especially when partners have different values, but they're
still communicating and working through it, and they both believe
family was a priority. So those are those were great
lessons to grow up with. And that's, you know, the
(20:42):
patterns of where we come from the roots of our
own things, even if we don't realize it. We learn
about money even from the things we're not aware of.
The subconscious. We saw the values of our parents regarding life,
regarding family, regarding money, regarding the choices they make. And
then when you're working your money muscle, you're pulling up
things from the roots to kind of examine them and
(21:06):
determine how how to get from where you are to
where you want to be. So it's all part of
one big tree or river or whatever analogy you might
want to use for it.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, it's all part of it. Though without their experiences,
I don't know that we would have gotten our own journey.
But the credit card definitely started to bring some questions
because that's not the way I wanted to live. It
really isn't the legacy I want to leave for the
boys either. Like for example, my father in law, his
(21:39):
wife passed away and he didn't know that she had
like five or six credit guards, so he got stuck
because he trusted her. But she got some credit cards,
some with his name and some without, so when she passed,
he got stuck with the ones that his name was
attached to, so there was really no communication there. And
some of the things that we do in our home now,
(22:01):
it's like openly talk about money. There's nothing wrong with
getting paid for something that you do. There's nothing wrong
with receiving the money, and often that relationship with it.
It's very troublesome with money. Like I think if money
was a person, it was just be like you're constantly
fighting with it. But you want to be friends with money,
(22:23):
and you want to know where your money goes and
make the money work for you, and the same thing
that your time, making it work for you so you
can live your best life possible. And obviously we all
have different circumstances. It's hard. I see in our next
door it's like people losing their jobs, people not being
able to have no food. I completely agree that there's
(22:46):
so much at there's so much at work right now
prevents us from really living our best life. But we
can only control what we do. And once you start
looking at your own situation, where your money comes from,
where your ghosts, and how you want to spend it,
then you begin to shape the life that you want.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
No, that makes sense. You talked about that before you
got married. The two of you sat down and talked
about your debt and your values. I've heard horror stories
of people who have gotten married and that's when they
find out that their spouse has significant credit cards, significant
student loans, and that's not a pleasant surprise to deal with.
(23:25):
And you both just overspent on a wedding and honeymoon
and whatever else because you weren't necessarily aware of the
overall picture.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yes, and that is so so important, because if you
don't work together, then you probably are not going to
go very far. And like you said, I think maybe still.
A few years ago, the statistic was that money was
the cause of divorce of most marriages, so I'm sure
it's still pretty high. My husband and I have been
together for almost twenty years, so we met in two
thousand and five, and the hardest times that we have
(23:55):
had as a couple have been during the low times
of our financial problems, right before getting into debt consolidation,
and during some of the rental So when we acquire
that first rental, we eventually then bought another one back
during that time two thousand and eight, we wanted to
fix it, so we did. My husband's very good he's
(24:18):
a very, very very talented person when he comes to construction,
building knowledgeable, so he did all the work. So some
of the credit card debt that we acquire were because
of the houses, in hopes that we would build a
portfolio of rental homes, and it was really hard to
go through that because he would go to work, then
(24:39):
he would go to the house, and then I was
away on a trip or something, so I wasn't really
contributing too much. He would almost get upset when I
would go to the house because I would start working
on something small. Obviously, and then I would sit down
and I'm like, Okay, I think I'm done here, and
that would leave. And he still talks about that, and
I'm like, there wasn't really a lot of community cation
(25:00):
back then, you know, Like I did my job as
a flight attendant and I had to be away. Back then,
I switched from one airline to another, so I took
a huge pay cut by moving to a different airline,
so I had to make up that money by flying more.
So I was flying back then like I don't know,
like one hundred and fifty hours, which is a lot.
(25:21):
So airline people usually work about eighty hours a month,
and then I was working like twice that. It's just
a lot of flying. So I was tired. And he
was like, well, you're just out flying around. I'm like,
that's tiring too.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
How it works. I've seen stewardesses. They work pretty hard.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah, it's a pretty hard job, not only the being
in the aircraft, but just being around people, being at
the airport, going from hotel to hotel. And that's you know,
twenty years, I finally started feeling the aches and like
rotelier clops, it's usually one of our biggest issues from
our backs and from the overheads and all that. So
some of our dead came from those moments, but some
(25:58):
of our issues also came from that because we weren't
communicating on what we were doing where we were going,
Like we were doing that, we were redoing the rental house,
but what was that for? Did we have a specific purpose?
And I think that's when by building my money muscle.
Now it's like I have short goals that kind of
moved me through the budgeting process. You know, I have
(26:22):
the goal of, for example, a certain amount in your
savings that makes me comfortable to have a certain amount
for my emergency fund because I've been on both ends.
I've had that amounts set aside, and I feel different
versus when I don't have it. Oh, I feel completely.
I just feel like living on the edge and like
(26:44):
I don't like living like this. So I just kind
of go through the small goals as to how I
want our life to be and how those building blocks
are set up. And you may not want a big
savings account, and that's okay. If you don't want it,
that's okay. But my car just down and they quoted
me thirty four thousand dollars for a new engine.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Thirty yes, thirty four hundred.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
No, No, thirty four thousand, yes.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Driving for thirty four thousand dollars engine.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
It's a twenty thirteen Hatchback BMW that I fell in
love with, but it was also an expensive lesson because
the mayenance every time it didn't break down often. I
didn't buy it new. It was new to me, but
the maintenance on the car was about three three thousand
(27:32):
and thirty five hundred every time he went in for something,
because of different reasons. So I knew that, and I
had a separate account for the maintenance. I knew that
I needed to save money for that, and I was
happy doing that. But obviously, right now, at this point,
thirty four thousand dollars is completely out of the question.
So now my next step is what are we going
to do? Do we need a second car? Is the
(27:54):
insurance or that all of those little questions before I
go into a dealership and get subbed in by a
really good salesperson into buying something new, I'm just not
really ready for that. So I'm just taking my time
with that because that's a big decision, and I highly
recommend for big decisions. Big purchases like a house, especially
(28:14):
a house, take your time, take your time and go
visit that house, like I don't know, more than more
than three times. When you purchase a house. You see
it for the first time, you fall in love, and
then you see it for a second time perhaps and
then a third time if your offer is accepted, and
then do a final walk through upon closing. That's almost
(28:36):
four times before for these incredible expensive purchase that you're
about to make, you see that real estate four times.
It should not be four times. You should be able
to sleep in that house for like two nights before
you buy it. Seriously, you know.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
We were a couple of years ago we looked at
maybe moving and there were a couple of places that
my husband and I liked, and then when we went
back to second time and we took our sons with us,
and it was like, yeah, no, this isn't this isn't
what we're looking for. So we didn't need to sleep
in it. But that second time, if you're not more
excited the next time when you go back, then it's
(29:10):
probably not the house. Fear. You should get more excited,
more connected, more whatever, and take your time on the
big house purchases. The problem is for a while here
houses were selling so fast. I had friends that were
looking to move, and numerous times they'd put bids. They
put in bids over the asking price. Then yes, stand
on their heads and whistle and whatever else, and they
(29:33):
were losing houses again and again because the housing market
was so crazy hot. But even so, unless you need to,
you know what, if the housing market is hot, that's
a great time to not be there, because that's when
the houses are more expensive than what they reasonably should be.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yes, it is so true. And people were doing the
no appraise will guarantee, which you know, if the house
apprais for a lower value, they were still going to
buy that by bringing more money to the table. And
to me, it just didn't like I like you said,
some people really needed to purchase another house, But if
you don't really need to, then maybe that it really
(30:12):
isn't the property for you. You don't want to give
more money than something is worth, or get into a
new house and be underwater already according to the numbers
of what the bank thinks the house is worth. So
it was really really crazy for houses. We moved five
years ago, so that was the other the second time
we got into that consolidation. It's always been real estate related,
(30:35):
mostly because of big expenses that stuff that needed to
be done. We moved five years ago into this house.
We live in an old home. It's a tutor home.
It's almost one hundred years old. It's beautiful and everyone says, well,
it has so much character. Let me tell you character
is expensive. Yes, it is very expensive. And while the
(30:55):
house has really good bones, it really came to us
with neglect because they didn't really take care of it.
A lot of neglect. And houses speak to you. I
know they have energy. You probably think I'm crazy, but
I am telling you. Houses have energy. And the energy
of this house was that he needed a lot of work.
(31:15):
It was suffering. And my husband, I call him the
house whisper because my husband goes into houses and he's like, yeah,
the house is not happy, and he just really really
takes the needs of the house as far as like structures,
you know, walls, all of it. So we had to
do a lot of extensive renovations into this house. They're
(31:36):
all behind the walls, Like the expensive stuff in your
home will be behind your walls and underneath in your mechanics,
your furnace, your water heater, all of that. You want
all of those little pieces to work just beautiful so
you can enjoy a peaceful environment.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
And you want them safely. I mean, one hundred years ago,
the wiring requirements, the electric things you would have had
no house would have been so much less. So, yeah,
you're going behind the walls to bring these things not
just up to code for some bureaucrat to rubber stamp,
but up to safety.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Because to safety, yes, yes, and bad electric hast cast
fires in the past, so yes, you want to make
sure that all of that is safe. But yes, most
of our debt that now that unless I'm thinking about it,
has been real estate related. There was probably a few
splurties on stuff vacations or whatnot, but it really wasn't
(32:30):
like that. It wasn't until I realized not only that
I wanted to get out of debt, but also how
to stay out of debt that I really learned my
lesson the second that was the second debt consolidation. That's
the lesson it gave me. So my goal wasn't just
to get out of debt. That was the goal in
the first time around. The second time around was to
get out of debt, but how to stay out of debt?
(32:52):
And I feel like that's not something that people really
think about because even your credit score doesn't let you
get out it fully, because if you're fully debt free,
your credit score will suffer and you won't be able
to buy something. So there's a balance there in your
credit score that you have to have some debt. And
(33:12):
I'm like, why do I need to have some debt?
So I started asking the questions, and I just want
to be able to make my own decisions. So that's
kind of where I'm at. So I want to be
out of debt, and I want to stay out of debt,
and to me, by staying out of debt, it's by
paying ourselves and our family first, making sure that our
structure is nurture, whether it's with maybe an outing or something,
(33:37):
but always doing something to nurture our souls before I
give my money that I work very hard for to
other people that I don't even know, because I don't
know my mortgage company. I just get a statement and
they say, well give me some money, and I'm like, well, okay,
but it's just my own version of my best life.
That's my version of it. I want to know where
(33:59):
the money goes, and I want to be able to
give it to services and people that I know, Like
I love going to our small businesses and knowing where
my money ends up and buying stuff from people that
may have used it once and now I can give
it a second use. I know where my money ends up.
I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, but I
(34:19):
stop our Amazon membership maybe last year, I think, so
I haven't had an Amazon membership, So whenever I buy something,
I'm very much more conscious or who I give the
money to, because, like I said, I worked very hard
for it.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Now you've talked about debt consolidation and that you've gone
through it twice. I've heard from a number of people
that they've had bad experiences with debt consolidation. It sounds
like yours was positive both times. Yes, So how were
you able to find companies that were legitimate that took
real care of you that you didn't walk away from
(34:55):
it feeling that you had just been scammed?
Speaker 2 (34:58):
You know, that's a great question. I liked to say
that I like to take credit for it, but I cannot.
It was my husband who did the due diligence to find.
We went to the company. It's called green Path, and
their structure is just like I said earlier. They negotiate
the company the rates with the credit card companies, and
(35:18):
I think we get charged fifty dollars months or that's
their fee, So there is a fee to it, but
it's all you know, rolled up into your monthly payment.
And they do the snowball effect or the snowball tactic,
which is every credit card you have five, your monthly
payment will get you know, divide into five payments and
(35:39):
once the lower the lowest balance credit card gets paid off,
that amount that they used to receive now gets moved
over to the one with the lowest balance at that
out of the four. Now he did all the works.
That is the company that we went through at the
two time, so we have been through that consolidation. We
(36:00):
use the same company and I recommended that company to
other people that feel that that's an option. I also
think that's a personal decision to go through it, because
your credit gets frozen if you try to get another
credit card. If you get another credit card, then the
deal you have with the credit cards and with green
Path will be it'll canceled out because you're seeking credit elsewhere. Also,
(36:25):
I believe it doesn't prevent you from buying a house,
but it shows up and it may prevent you from
purchasing a car. So the second time, we made sure
that we had everything that we needed before we went
into this frozen, you know, dormant state for credit. But
I'm hoping to kind of just keep it that way
(36:46):
because that's not how I want to spend my life. Nowadays,
I will spend less so I don't have to work more.
So I'm very conscious about that, and I wasn't like
that before. I just always just spend, spend, spend until
my heart was full. But I don't do that.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
I tell people, do you really want to be paying
for today's meal three months from now? Because if you're
buying it on credit card and you're not paying the
full balance, then that just becomes part of that big
ball you're throwing money at in the hopes it'll eventually
work its way down. The reason that you have to
have credit to get credit to get these loans, whether
(37:22):
for a house or car, whatever, is because they have
to see a history so that they know that you
will make those payments. But on the flip side, you
don't want your history to become the overwhelming mess that
is where all your money is going. Yes, if you
own a house and you're paying a mortgage, and if
you have a car and you're making a payment, then
you're already building that credit. You don't need five more
(37:45):
credit cards. If you're young and you are just starting
to work, maybe you're living in your folks house, still,
then get a credit card, use it periodically, pay it
off monthly, so that you're starting to build that history,
so that when you want to look at getting a
car or a house or whatever else, they may not
see a huge history, but they'll see a history. They'll
see the intention and the organization and that you're making
(38:08):
these payments. It's too easy. I mean when I went
to college, you know, you barely started. The next thing
you do, you had ten credit card applications at your mail.
And I knew people that by the end of the
first semester were already in debt that they would carry
with them for ten years after graduating, and they were
still getting more credit card applications, because that's just the
(38:31):
way things were done at that point in time.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yes, and they come hard at you. So I think
that's why it's also important to share those topics when
you're growing up, because a lot of us, I mean,
I knew my parents had trouble, but I didn't really
understand the whole aspect of it. So I just knew
that a credit card could get you something and then
I had to pay you back and if I didn't,
(38:54):
I would probably have bad credit. But it wasn't really
fully thinking it through person. So when you're just given
the freedom to spend money, or it feels like the
freedom to spend that, it just kind of gets out
of control because you've never had that freedom before. You've
never had that ability to do something like that. In
combination with the student loans and credit card dead it's
(39:17):
just a combination for disaster when you're just kind of
get wrapped up into that because we're afraid to talk
about it and to share the learning, like feels like
we're going to be seen as like, oh, you just
don't know anything. But I'm like, if anything I can
share from this experience is for you to take whatever resonates.
Obviously everyone's experience with money is different, but if we
(39:37):
could just talk about it, a little bit more and
just help them decide how they want to live their life.
Then maybe they'll be like, well, maybe that a credit
card isn't for me, or you know, just doing things differently.
That's all.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Before we want to wrap up, I do want to
talk to you a little bit. You are a homeschooler
now in Michigan they have started recently putting financial literacy
into schools. As a homeschooling mom, you get to choose
your curriculum. I don't know how old your kids are
or at what point in time you ended up homeschooling.
How did you evolve to homeschooling or was that always
(40:10):
the plan?
Speaker 2 (40:11):
So it wasn't always a plan. We were pandemic homeschoolers,
and twenty twenty kind of pushed me into something that
I knew nothing about. I was actually afraid, and honestly,
if he hadn't been for the pandemic, I don't know
that I would be here. I like to say that
I probably would have taken the leap of leaving the system,
but it might have been I was too comfortable working
within the system, you know, doing the school drop off,
(40:33):
the pickup, the mom thing, the extracurriculars, like I was
the definition of a tiger mom. So when we left
the school system because of twenty twenty, we kind of
evolved because I realized how disconnected I was for my
oldest son. My boys are eleven and six. Now. Back
then twenty twenty, my oldest son was six, so I
(40:54):
was living with him, I was living under the same roof.
But when we started homeschool, then we were spending time together.
Felt how disconnected we were. We didn't really know each other,
and I didn't really think that was right. So we
started reconnecting. You know. I went into curriculum frenzy. At first,
that was another expensive lesson. I spent almost ten thousand
(41:15):
dollars buying curriculum. And again it was in big purchases.
It was small purchases because oh this looks good, this
looks good, twenty dollars, thirty dollars Amazon twenty five, thirty five,
forty five, nineteen, and next thing, you know, boxes were
just coming to my house and I'm like, okay. So
it was really hard at the beginning, and then the
state of mission was like yes, mask, no mask, yes this,
(41:39):
no this. There was a hole back and forth the
twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. So I said,
let's just do it for a year and we'll reassess.
And that second year came around, let's reassess or still
don't really know what's going to happen, so let's just
stay out another year, and next thing, you know, we
just never went back. We do check ins. I do
(42:00):
quarterly checkings with the boys as far as our activities
because they're constantly changing. Similar to the money, well, the
money will always be moving, so your budget will always
have some variables moving. That's why it's important to look
into it because it will always be moving. So our
interests are always moving, and we do checkings. We have
(42:21):
some groups that we meet up that we prioritize to
meet up with, and then we build everything else around it.
And I love that they have added those classes into
the school system because it's really important. We homeschool because
I love spending time with my kids and because right
now that's what works for all of us as a family.
If they wanted to go back to school, I would
(42:43):
be like, Okay, let's make sure that we set you
up for success to go into the system that requires X,
Y or z this is what they require of use.
Let's set you up for success. And I think by
having literacy classes, financial literacy, that's setting up people success.
That's what we want for people. We want everyone to succeed,
(43:03):
everyone to find their best live their best life. However
they want to do that. They work for the money,
that work really hard, spend it however you want, but
feeling free in the process of earning it and then
spending it. It's all good. Just you know, whatever works
for you. But we have to be open about it.
So I hope they keep those classes, and I hope
(43:25):
they help people and their families because it was something
that we really needed and I didn't realize that until
we started home educating.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
I have had friends throughout the years who have homeschooled
for various reasons m h and in different ways. Yes,
and I think it's fascinating. It wasn't for us. I
did consider it at some point in time, okay, and
kind of looked into what it would mean, you know,
because obviously, while while it's great in the moment, you've
(43:53):
also got to be ready at the point in time
when they theoretically graduate from high school and are ready
to move on have they really had the full breadth
of education that they need or the depth on the
various subjects of their interest. And I know there are
wonderful homeschooling communities out there that you're not expected to
be an expert on every subject. And a lot of
the community colleges work really well with homeschoolers. Yes, so
(44:17):
there's a lot of great opportunities out there. So I
think it's a fascinating world. And I know that's one
of your podcasts, and I think your website are on homeschooling.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Yeah, so I am very alternative. I'm what's considered a nonschooler,
so I follow very self directed education practices. And it is,
like you said, it is definitely different for everyone. Everyone's
way of homeschooling is different because our interests are very different.
So the way we live our life is very different
as well. And I really think their in aviation, you know,
(44:47):
nine to eleven, it's a definite marker of the industry
what you could do pre nine to eleven and what
you could do post nine to eleven as far as
like airport security, all of that. I feel that homeschool
only has twenty twenty. It's a definite marker in the
homeschooling world. Prior to twenty twenty, it was very curriculum based,
(45:11):
very structure, which is like doing school at home. And
post twenty twenty there was a lot of different ways,
a lot of groups formed, a lot of meetups, micro schools,
co ops, so it really revolutionized what families were looking
for out of home educating. And I think that's where
I was kind of grateful that I started back then.
(45:34):
I don't know that I would be here if I
had been thinking about homeschooling back in twenty fourteen, when
my oldest son was born, even back then. You know,
my younger son was born in twenty nineteen, and I
started thinking about it because I wanted to travel and
you know, do all these things which we do, but
it felt unattainable for some reason. There wasn't a lot
(45:55):
of diversity in the homeschooling world either too. You know,
we're biracial family, so that was important to us, and
it was hard to find our core group of people,
but we eventually did. And now that's kind of what
I do. I love sharing the stories because sometimes I
feel like people see home educating in us like a
dark forest and you're at the edge of the forest
(46:17):
and you're like, hmm, it looks all known, and it is.
But I can tell you that once you dive through,
walk through the darker paths, which is our conditioning, what
we think education should look like, how we do education
at home, what they should know home educating is very
non linear learning. You still learn everything is just not
(46:39):
the way it shows up in the school system. So
once you get through those darker fears. And I had
a lot of fears. Oh my early journals are full
of I don't know if I can do this. I
was afraid. They have a lot of tears. Those pages
have a lot of salty tears because I was a
hot mess. Honestly, I tell people I can do it.
(47:01):
If I can work through those conditioning aspects that I had,
I'm telling you anybody can do it. It's just takes
a little bit of work. And same with the money
is just it takes a little bit of work and dedication,
and it doesn't happen all that once. I've been at
this since twenty twenty and I still have moments. It
doesn't stop me from having the moments, they're just not
(47:22):
as often. So It's been a beautiful journey. I wouldn't
change for the world, but I know twenty twenty really
changed a lot for a lot of families, and it
made it possible for us to do that. I invite
everyone to explore if it is for you, it works
if it doesn't. Some people do thrive in the educational system.
I did. I was a perfect student, I really was.
(47:44):
I have to say that, but I've always loved school.
I love instruction. I love learning from a person, so
I love the instruction setup. I didn't really love writing
papers or getting grades, but I was always a good student,
so I love the structure, the schedules, the classrooms, all
of that. It was good to me, but it's not
probably what my children would enjoy at this point. It
(48:06):
doesn't mean that it's not for them later. Both of
them are thinking about careers that require a college degree,
so we are working towards getting what they need in
order for them to feel successful, even though it's still
kind of early. But they're both talk about it, so
we talk about the preparation that that needs.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
That's awesome. I have really enjoyed talking to you. I
think we've covered I don't even know how many yes.
Subject ariis I've enjoyed every moment of it. I'm going
to share your website and your podcast links when I
post this. I just wanted to thank you for coming here.
Do you have any final advice or thoughts you want
to share?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Thank you so much more, Siny for having me and
for really opening the space to speak about this particular topic.
I feel like I think about it often and it's
been a huge part of a transformation. But if you're
thinking about it about money, it's just really just dream big,
but start small. Find out where your money goes. First,
(49:04):
look at your bank accounts. It's okay to look into it,
you know, make it a nice date with yourself, with
your partner, and look at the money. Look at the money,
because your time is so valuable and so precious that
you should use it however you want to. So make
your money work for you and don't just work for
your money. That's it.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Thank you. So this has been Marcie talks Money in Life.
I am money Marcie, and thanks for listening. And you
got this
Host
Marci Grossman
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